Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 17:58:52 GMT
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Last-modified: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 20:54:48 GMT
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	<title>Images Inspired by Chihuly Glass</title>
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<h1> 
	Images Inspired by Chihuly Glass <br>
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	by Adam Finkelstein
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<a href="http://www.chihuly.com">Dale Chihuly</a>
is a Seattle-based artist who works primarily in glass.
He is a pioneer in this art form and has received worldwide attention
for his work.  I had the pleasure viewing a large body of his glass
at his installation in the Seattle Art Museum in 1992.  There are no
words to describe the beauty of his glass.  Let it suffice to say that
the computer-generated images below were inspired by Chihuly glass,
but they have a long way to go....

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This is my first attempt at modeling something glass-like.  I used
John Snyder's generative modeling system to create the geometry.
The base and outer rim are splines which were created by randomly
perturbing the control points away from a circle.  The colors are
simple spirals of blue and green paint.  I used John Snyder's ray
tracer to create the image from the geometry.
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Despite its similarity to an ashtray from the 70's, I am quite pleased
with most the image.  Unfortunately, the shadow is too crisp; it
exhibits none of the light focusing and spreading that would occur if
light were sent through a real glass dish of that shape.  That led
me to the next image:

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I looked through some books on Chiluly's art and found that in quite a
few photographs, his glass is shown on a black, highly-reflective table.
Needless to say, it is a dramatic effect.  But more importantly, none of
the complicated focusing effects appear in the shadow on the table, 
because there is no shadow on the table -- just a reflection of the glass.
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So in the image above, I placed the glass on a highly reflective table.
Since such a table does not send light up to the glass (except in the 
mirror direction from the lights) the glass would naturally appear too
dark.  So I made the ``painted'' areas on the glass emit light, giving
the work a slightly neon-esque effect.  People tell me it comes across
as ``dramatic lighting'' so I'm happy with it.
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This is a work in progress.  I am trying to figure out how to render
these things in Greg Ward's Radiance package.

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